A quick note today on a story covered at the end of NPR’s morning edition: General Mills is apparently feeling the strain of rising corn prices as a result of the ethanol buzz. They reported that General Mill’s recent posted profits did not come without some fancy product shuffling. Not only did they reduce discounts and up the price to consumers on products like Cheerios, they also dropped the size of each box! Did anybody notice the change? No. (more…)

Of the many insights for conservation and sustainability initiatives found in the work of ecologists, perhaps the most valuable is not a particular concept or principle, but the guidance provided by the discipline itself for a new way of thinking about how we interact with the natural world. The principles of ecology share in a philosophy of interconnectedness that weighs the form and function of a system together, capturing both inner dynamics as well as the phenomena that emerge from the system’s operation as a whole. To think ecologically, guided by its principles and examples, offers a great many benefits to people as we decide to how best interact with the world. Aldo Leopold called this “thinking like a mountain.” By revealing complexity and interconnectedness within and between places, ecological thinking forces us to assume that same level of complexity and interconnectedness in the outcomes of our behavior. Thinking ecologically also suggests a set of goals, such as diversity and resilience, by which managed ecosystems can thrive and persist over time. And perhaps most importantly, thinking in this way insists that people admit their residence within ecosystems, contrary to the too-long-held human vs. nature dichotomy, transforming conquerors of nature into potential managers of and entrenched participants in ecosystems. (more…)

… and Nick’s response to my article is certainly an intelligently crafted one. Though I could, however, childishly point out that his argument is guilty of a logical fallacy called the appeal to common practice, I believe I will refrain from such and instead focus on the question he ended with:

“Do current attitudes toward illegal immigrants characterize a depraved United States, fat on its own glory, turning a back on the ideals it claims for its past?

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In a recent commentary, Phil Loring expressed some awkwardness regarding a perceived contradiction between a movement to save Ellis Island and the grass roots furor overillegal immigration which probably had a share in defeating Comprehensive Immigration Reform, the Dream Act, and New York state’s Driver’s License initiative. There is an important distinction, however, which has been overlooked in his commentary. Whatever your feelings towards Ellis Island, it was a processing center for immigrants. By definition, those immigrants admitted through the Island station were legal. There is no connection between those immigrants and measures in Texas and Florida that are designed to prevent illegal immigration. (more…)